Tapestry of traditions for our children

Why does adivaani do books?

Books keep history, heritage and identity alive; books reinvent, reinterpret and make relevant voices, thoughts, ideas and dreams. In the words, language, imagery and pages that books are made of are the threads of ourselves that each one of us contributes to build the Tapestry of traditions for our children.

This bit of yarn from adivaani and the Tribal Cultural Heritage in India Foundation is to help strengthen skills of communication in English a principal link language today.

Most Adivasi children with the opportunity at education are learning English at some level and in some form or the other. But there’s still a gap between them and other children in India.

We’d like our two illustrated books on the Santal Creation stories series to be the instrument to achieve this mastery of English and on another level accomplish something more critical– re-initiating the children to these wonderful stories of Adivasi origin–stories families or communities may have forgotten themselves or may not have had the time to re-tell.

Supplementing the books are two special simple animations to help the children practise English grammar and pronunciation.

The partnership with the Tribal Cultural Heritage in India Foundation has enabled us to circulate copies of the books and animations for free to schools, hostels, libraries, NGO’s and other agencies preserving and promoting Adivasi cultural heritage in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Assam.

But we now need you to add to the yarn. To facilitate the actualisation of the ‘language building through reading’ exercise we’re conducting a workshop on the 30th of November, 2013 and the 1st of December 2013 at Johar, HRD Centre, Dumka.

We need Adivasis to come forward to assist us with spreading the ethos of the project.

We can only accommodate 10 people at the workshop from where adivaani will host one of you to travel with the project to the centres identified to disseminate the learning.

The 2 day workshop on Language, Publishing, Books and Communication skills is sponsored, so if you’re willing to attend and commit to seeing the project through, just send in your names and contact information to info@adivaani.org by the 20th of November, 2013 and we’ll take care of the rest.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

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Tapestry of traditions for our children:

A language building through reading initiative in collaboration with the Tribal Cultural Heritage in India Foundation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.